On the Rim of Neruda’s Well
We sat there, he and I,
on the rim of Neruda’s well
staring into the darkness.
The full moon’s light played
with the meadow’s rolling hills, great grass tufts,
and the western inside wall of the well.
I was illuminated, the man was not –
though the man might have thought the same thing –
that he was illuminated, and I was not.
The man spoke, “In the sensing, there is only the sensed.
Thus, there is no thing here.
Know that. There is no thing here.”
I looked around me, relishing the full-moon’s light,
the cool breeze, the slight dampness in the air.
The man disappeared from my consciousness,
sitting as he did so quietly in deep shadow
until he spoke,
“You are located” he said, “neither here nor there, nor anywhere.”
I nodded in agreement, in the dark of the night, in the light of the moon,
in the reverie of the moment,
and then I lost my way and found myself and fell into the dark –
into the dark of the well and the well of the night, and into the light of the moon.
Paula Appling is a fiber artist, hiker, editor, poet, and a terrible cook. Her poetry has been published in Toasted Cheese, Caveat Lector, The Writing Disorder and Blue Lake Review. She recently published Shadow World, an unsettling poetic journey. She lives with her husband and 2 cats in South Carolina.
Amethyst Review 